Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

“Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work...and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..”
― Vincent van Gogh

“..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“In the following days the twins went all over the city; they visited more museums, particularly the avant-garde ones. Whenever Magda spotted a Van Gogh her eyes would fill with tears, remembering the aberrational agony this great artist had gone through. The work that stirred her most was one of those many self-portraits of the artist in a sober and tormented mood; a painting built by many heavy brushstrokes of dense undiluted paint applied spirally giving the impression that the image was materializing from a turquoise background. Magda spent a full ten minutes before one such portrait. When she returned back to earth she noticed a young man beside her, as absorbed with the painting as she was and whose face looked familiar.”
― Anton Sammut, Memories of Recurrent Echoes

“Dear brother,

I feel what Pa and Ma instinctively think about me (I don’t say reasonably).
There’s a similar reluctance about taking me into the house as there would be about having a large, shaggy dog in the house. He’ll come into the room with wet paws — and then, he’s so shaggy. He’ll get in everyone’s way. And he barks so loudly.
In short — it’s a dirty animal.
Very well — but the animal has a human history and, although it’s a dog, a human soul, and one with finer feelings at that, able to feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog can’t do.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them as they are.

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nuenen, 15 December 1883”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Consciousness is our gateway to experience: It enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine.”
― Daniel Bor, The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning

“I’m happy to just be able to come across things. I don’t need to be happy. Happiness is a kind of cheap word. Let’s face it, I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. I would commit suicide. I would shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I would jump from a window…you know, I can think about death openly. It’s nothing to fear. It’s nothing sacred. I’ve seen so many people die. Life’s not sacred either”
― Bob Dylan, The Essential Interviews

“Dans chaque vie où de la pluie doit tomber, quelques jours seront sombres et lugubres – c'est vrai, il ne peut en aller autrement, et pourtant je me demande si le nombre de jours sombres et lugubres peut parfois devenir trop grand ? La lutte intérieure de Van Gogh: Sa vie, son œuvre et sa maladie mentale - Liesbeth Heenk”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Admire as much as you can, most people don't admire enough.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“To me, that book has been both a revelation and a gospel.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Iron bars cut the moon’s naked skin. The cracked bone, brittle and aging, couldn’t find any light, and so the trees were silent. On the opposite end of the horizon, a silent neighbor flickered gently. A whisper. It was unclouded and bright, like a mind in its infancy, exuding a peace that Vincent envied.”
― Mieke Leenders

“No excellent soul is exempt from mixture of madness”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life

“Painters understand nature & love her & teach us to see.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“(...) it was in this extreme poverty that I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I’ll recover from it, I’ll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I’ll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me, and now I’m on my way and my pencil has become somewhat obedient and seems to become more so day by day. It was poverty, too long and too severe, that had discouraged me to the point where I could no longer do anything.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“i saw you
vincent van
gogh perched
on those pennsylvania
cornfields communing
amid secret black
bird societies. yes.”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“Suurin osa lähimmistä työtovereistani oli kaltaisiani koulutettuja väliinputoajia, jotka olivat lähteneet Suomesta työttömyyttä pakoon. Heidän ammatillisessa osaamisessaan ei ollut mitään vikaa, vaikka esimerkiksi yritysvalmentaja Jari Sarasvuo on sanonut, että ammattitaidon tunnusmerkki on se, että sille löytyy ostaja, eikä ilman ostajaa ole ammattitaitoakaan. Olisipa Sarasvuo ollut kertomassa tämän viisauden vaikkapa Vincent van Goghille, joka myi eläessään vain yhden taulun.”
― Anssi Ylirönni, Valintamme ei kohdistunut sinuun: työttömyyden monet kasvot

“Hannah
do you even know the meaning of evening silences?
Watching the ebb, the halo hanging upon your eyes?
Hannah
do we even know the love we twined in those pines?
We walked with veils like of virgin shyness?
Those constellation, those stars that gleam and thrill,
those seamless touches, those eyes, shyness and sheen,
those Hannah,
those nights painted by Vincent Van Gogh, those nights I took you in my arms and held you like an eg”
― Tapiwanaishe Pamacheche , Hannah Cherub: Hannah cherub

“He smiles and his wavy haired, bright eyed head scoops me in but quickly lands on Mimi. It lingers a bit long, his chest frozen as if the breath's been knocked out; he already loves her. Mothers know these things. It's the kind of love that springs from awe, attraction, intellectual curiosity, and finding a woman mom approves of... the girl next door with exciting fangs. I wonder if their offspring will have fangs.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“He smiles and his wavy haired, bright eyed head scoops me in but quickly lands on Mimi. It lingers a bit long, his chest frozen as if the breath's been knocked out; he already loves her. Mothers know these things. It's the kind of love that springs from awe, attraction, intellectual curiosity, and finding a woman mom approves of... the girl next door with exciting fangs. I wonder if their offspring will have fangs. - Holly Carter”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“...his paintings are distinctly Vincent:
vivid colors
thick paint
textured fields and skies and flowers and trees and houses
all in blues and oranges and yellows and pinks and
whites and greens and reds.”
― Deborah Heiligman, Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers

“Vincent didn't see the world as a collection of plain, unaffected objects. He saw the unfolding drama of the human story, which to him was a heartbreaking tale.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Many artists took their easels and paints outside and captured what they saw. Vincent wanted to capture what he felt as he tried to remember what he saw.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“This is the intangibility of genius--to create work that transfers from the canvas, the page, or the instrument into the heart of another person, arousing a longing for beauty and an end to sadness. This was what Vincent wanted to create--art that would transfer from his easel into someone else's soul to work as a balm of healing for the broken.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“At the center of my life, I have found new hope and a renewed direction. I feel the communal surge of spirit amidst a group of people who had, like us, lost theirs to some degree in the places they fled. I will not allow Theo to bring me down. I will lift him up.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“Life isn't mapped out for us, Tom,' I say. 'We can change! We can do it together. Let's not give up on each other now. There is too much to lose; I love you.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“Life isn't mapped out for us, Tom," I say. "We can change! We can do it together. Let's not give up on each other now. There is too much to lose; I love you.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces